Thursday, March 10, 2011

We gathered for our second annual christmas craft make and take exchange. We started with a festive holiday meal, and then got busy crafting. The premise being: everyone brings enough materials to make 8-10 of your one craft, everone attending gets to make one (or more) of your craft so they get to walk away with 5+ different finished crafts to either use as easy christmas gifts or keepsakes for themselves.

Angie brought her jewelry making materials and we went to town designing and making earrings.

Kelly Brought materials to make "pie-in-a-jar" gifts. line the jar with pie dough, fill with filling, cover with pie crust with a vent hole, wipe top with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar and bam! you have a gift to give to someone, for them to cook and enjoy right away..... or freeze and save for a cold winters night.

Thanks for the fun night. Crafting and chatting is my favorite use of time.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Novembers meeting was delightful. We gathered at the Weights home and enjoyed some very yummy greek inspired treats.

Libby had put together a super fun and informative game of "who wants to be a drachma-niar?" where we had two teams (team Hestia, and the Athenians) and learned through answering questions. It was pretty close throughout but the Athenians won out in the end.

I put together handouts with Greek and Norse mythology trees, Roman names of Greek Gods, and comparisons of similar beliefs between the two and even with our own religion. I discussed these and displayed the very entertaining drawings from the mythology books I was raised on to illustrate my points.

In most sets of beliefs there is a creation story:

Greek- Prometheus was in charge the the creation of man, he was bound and punished for giving them fire

Norse- The first man and woman were made from an ash and alder tree.

There often is a flood story too.

Greek- the flood was released after pandora opened her box and let out the evils of the world, the human race had fallen to these evils and needed to be destroyed. Deucalion was the man warned to make an ark. The race of man that was generated by Deucalion was made of stone and was harder, was able to resist the evils a little better than the first race.

Norse-the world was destroyed in an epic battle of the gods and monsters, only two human survivors remained, Lif "Life" and Lifthrasir "Stubborn Will To Live", their descendants would people the new earth.

"Trees of Life"

Greek-Golden apples that were stolen by Hercules.

Norse- apples that gave eternal youthIt was interesting to discuss how our English word for Friday was dirrived from the name of the Norse God of beauty, Freya. (who drove a charriot pulled by grey cats ) The word friday in the romantic languages, ie french "Vendredi", was derived from the Roman name for the Greek God of Love, Venus. (Greek name: Aphrodite)

Similar Gods with similar strengths and purposes:

Greek- Zeus, ruler of Gods, fought with lightening bolts

Norse- Thor

Crafty Demi-God

Greek- Hermes

Norse-Loki

Three Fates that spin and cut the threads of life.God of the Sun

Greek- Helios and his golden chariot the sun

Norse- Frey who rode a golden boar

And........ here is the picture that won the prize of most favorite image. Perseus saving Andromeda from the Kraken. (aka, drawing of the movie "Tremors")

Winners of the games won Ambrosia "yummy spreadable honey" and a pomegranate since that was Persephone's choice of food when she was being held hostage in the underworld.